The present invention relates to aircraft control systems and, more particularly, to automatic flight control systems which allow normal manual maneuvering as well as automatic hover position and hover velocity control.
As the complexity of aircraft control systems increases, particularly in connection with helicopter and similar VTOL aircraft, there is an increasing need to provide systems which lessen pilot workload during aircraft operation. While automatic control systems for selectively providing automatic hover velocity control or hover position control have been known for some time, such systems have required the manual selection of a hover velocity hold condition or a hover position hold condition. As a result, the pilot must consciously make selections during aircraft maneuvering which require other than normal stick control if either one of the modes of operation is to be achieved. In high workload environments, this increases the level of attention that the pilot must provide to maintain safe operation of the aircraft.
The present invention has therefore been developed to overcome the shortcomings of the above known and similar techniques and to provide a system and technique which allows normal manual control during automatic flight, yet provides an improved transition to maintain hover position hold or hover velocity hold with natural pilot movements.